Our business ... our life

05/20/2010

Aside from the obvious “fruits of your labor” and “hard work pays off” there are a lot of principals of business to be learned from a garden. As this growing season begins I am thinking about the things that I am learning and perhaps you may decide to chime in as well.

Our family grows a garden every year. The entire family is involved from the beginning plans to eating the fruits and vegetables. One year we planed to grow cabbage. My son found a packet of seeds at the store and we set out our plants. We read the directions followed the suggestions and we grew… big beautiful cabbages. Rows of green and purple leaves sprouted from the well kept garden. We watered and we tended our garden. We pulled weeds we took pictures AND we were very successful in growing our cabbage. Our children were very proud. Our children were proud until they tasted our harvest. Greta said “ewww … what do you do with that?” Arlo said “Mom… maybe we could give it to our neighbors… they are such good friends…” Oliver suggested we just eat a little. He is the most diplomatic of the three. Turned out that NO ONE liked cabbage… we did not even know any one who liked cabbage and I spent the rest of the summer trying to find recipes for cabbage that we would eat… It was a total waste of time folks… This year… first rule… NO CABBAGE!!!

In business we may decide to build that killer app… create that beautiful product… we get excited about the creative process and sometimes we forget to think about our customer. Perhaps you can think of your own examples where some one said “I really thought it would sell”